A Vulnerability Issue

by Maud Lemoine posted on July 21, 2009

Playing Fashion Edition is a non-commercial project focused on fashion, contemporary art and culture. It’s a quarterly webzine created all over the world – from Moscow to Paris to New York to London.
Playing Fashion Edition launched its redesigned Summer issue with Vulnerability as its theme.

If you flick through this issue, one thing you’ll definetely notice is that there is plenty of nudity. From the main cover to images of girls as beautiful as they are inspiring - one can’t help but spot flesh, flesh, flesh. This wasn’t an intention. Nor was there any need to look terribly trendy, sexy or shocking. Unconsciously, nudity came up as a strong visual statement on something people are experiencing now, something we picked as a theme for the issue.
Vulnerability.
In the world that has just buried its ego under a pile of cash the very sensation of being exposed to confusion and danger is a common thing. People are not afraid to be afraid anymore. They don’t care to hide their feelings. They don’t bother to pretend being someone they are not. And in fashion, if you take clothes, accessories and other status memorabilia away what is left there? A beautiful fragile creature we sometimes tend to forget about - a human being.
For the redesigned PF English Version we asked our favorite creatives to investigate the idea of vulnerability.
Eric Guillemain and Chadwick Tyler were the most obvious choices as they both work with fashion models but don’t put clothes as the center of their story which remind us fashion isn’t all about the latest trends but a combination of ideas and visions. Usual advertisement space in the first pages of the magazine are Elisabeth Frering’s territory , which presents a series of elegant and sensitive drawings, variations on the desarticulation of the bestiary of innocence appearing by the means repeated, and the enigmatic smile of the sex and puberty.
So out of personal essays, provoking fashion pictures and gentle watercolors, this issue was born - a scrapbook rather than a fashion volume. We wanted to make it simple and honest. That’s what we thought would be right for the moment.

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